Compassion Fatigue Recovery - Part I

God’s Call to the Burned out and Betrayed:

Olly Olly All Come Free!

by Julia C Loren

You narly bunch of pirates and parrot heads (Jimmy Buffet fans), you who are playing hide and go seek with the Lord- Who sent you into the streets to play and what made you scurry away from the church? Although your past involvement in the church may have left you feeling betrayed and cast out, although your zeal for the Lord may have long burned out, this is what the Lord says- “OllY, OllY, All COME FREE!” The Lord can bear your misery no longer (Judges 10:16). We who have burned out or have been betrayed during past ministry involvement are the “Jepthtah sect” (see Judges 10-11) that the Father wants to dismantle and fold into His arms of love and bring freedom to be His beloved.

I’ve spent the last few years recovering from ministry and life burnout and have learned a few things that may help you recover, too.

I realized that my burnout and church experiences had led me and other “adventurers” (NIV translation regarding Jepthah’s friends) to play hide and seek with God like children who refuse to come in for dinner when their Father calls. Here I am. No there I go. Where are you Lord? Do I care? I was so frustrated that I left my church and wandered south. It was about a year before I walked into a new church – two states away. The minute I walked in I experienced my first (and last) anxiety attack. It was then that I realized how severely burnt out I was from my years in ministry and work as a professional counselor, and wondered if I would ever recover. I could barely tolerate church services and in fact, rarely attended for the next two years.

I walked on the beach for months like a zombie, ended a relationship with a man I thought I was in love with, an ending that would fizzle the last of the embers of life flickering in my heart. My only choice seemed to be antidepressants. Then I remembered the days when zeal for the Lord consumed me and, well, rather than lift me up with wonderful memories, I just felt more depressed to tell the truth…depressed to the point where I begged God to take me home. I could no longer hold onto the good memories and perceived only my twisted distortions of my past church memories. I saw nothing worth living for.

How did I reach that point of despair? Research shows that the symptoms of burnout are generally resident for about 18 months before a person succumbs into a zombie-like state. I ministered in the midst of burnout for at least two years before I actually left the church that I had been an integral part of for 9 years. During my decades as a believer, I had initially met God while living in Israel, then soaked up John Wimber’s teaching and healing ministry, basked in a prolonged visitation of God’s love and Presence, embraced Mike Bickle’s teachings with a sigh of relief, splashed in the rivers of renewal in Toronto and lay electrocuted under the hand of John Arnott not once, but twice (once in the Anaheim Vineyard and once in Vancouver, BC) - but nothing seemed to make a lasting impact on me. I felt an anointing from those Holy Spirit shock therapies that stunned me by its accuracy and power and carried me far and wide in ministry yet I could not recover my love for God. I was simply, dutifully, stepping out like God’s puppet, long since wondering when I descended from the position of being HIS GREAT lOVE to the position of dutiful servant straight off the casting mold of some droll British aristocratic household. Can you relate?

Psychological and emotional burnout is caused by prolonged stress resulting from idealistic beginnings, ministering or working beyond your gifting or understanding, resisting maturing as a caregiver, the seeking of validation from others rather than from yourself and from the Father, and finally, it is lack of knowing your mission and living consistently with that mission leaving the outcomes to God. Spiritual burnout is caused by all of the above yet one thing more – failure to remain in the loving Presence of the Father and shifting from ministry out of love to ministering out of duty. The demands of the people are then perceived as a threat and you do the best you can to silence them. Even if that means sailing away from the church, from your family, from everyone.

Research also shows that after about 18 months of burnout, the newly created zombie often acts out with secretive, self-destructive behaviors – alcohol, affairs, you know the stories. The idealistic minister has become shipwrecked! Rather than fall into the arms of the Father, shipwrecked people often turn away and become pirates and adventurers. life and ministry do cause pain on occasion but the effects do not need to become deleterious. Healing from burnout first requires a change in perception. Unfortunately, that is almost impossible to do on your own.

Let me tell you what happened that jump started my recovery. Towards the end of my peripatetic pathetic wander lust, the Lord led me to buy a sailboat moored in Dana Point Harbor (south of los Angeles) and rocked me to sleep at night to the ministering sounds of Jimmy Buffet and Hawaiian slack key guitarists, British Vineyard worship and Native American flutes.

I suppose He could not bear my misery anymore for He gave me a dream that led me to a new church near the harbor (Vineyard Community Church in Aliso Viejo) and during the first worship service I attended, sovereignly lifted the depression, anger, fear of church, and opened the doors of my spirit. I actually head Him yelling, “Olly olly all come free.” Suddenly, I felt spiritually excited for the first time in ten years. I discovered a willingness to jump into the river of God’s love and even desired to linger long in worship. What a shock. Years of trudging about like Winnie-the-Pooh’s Eeor fell away in an instant. You couldn’t wipe the smile off my face for a week. Rather than being shipwrecked on the shores of burnout and compassion fatigue, the Lord shipwrecked me in a safe harbor where I could rediscover His loving presence.

Within two weeks, the Lord took me aside on a 12-day personal retreat involving a seminar in Accelerated Recovery from Compassion Fatigue at the University of South Florida’s International Traumatology Institute, and began opening the eyes of my understanding, teaching me more about burnout, compassion fatigue and recovery. He brought healing to my burnout from the secondary traumatization that I had been wallowing under resulting from my work as a counselor. Then, He began lifting the burnout from my work in ministry and filling me with His love. His call, “Olly, olly all come free” to the burned out and betrayed Jepthtah sect is simply explained as this:

come back into the family – the family needs and wants you,

burnout symptoms are reversible,

you do not have to leave the ministry or your work to recover and in fact, leaving may decrease your resiliency to stress,

if you did hit the skids you do not have to remain on skid row (unless you want to),

the Father Himself is very fond of you and invites you to fugghetaboutit, come in, heal up, mature in your gifts and become a leader in the house of the Lord (like Jepthah in Judges),

there is an accelerated recovery plan available for you that involves both word and Spirit – the words of truth and understanding that you need to hear and the pain you need to speak out & the Holy Spirit lifting the burnout from your spirit.

If you are burnt out or suffering from compassion fatigue, if you cannot bear the demands of work and life, this is what the Lord says- "OllY OllY All COME FREE!" The Lord can bear your misery no longer. The Father wants to dismantle your pain and fold you into His arms of love. Just say, “Yes Lord” and wait for Him to lead you to a safe harbor. He will meet you there and bring you back into the house for dinner with the family of God for this is the hour and the day that He is calling all Jepthahs back to the table.

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